Jul 7, 2014

SOMETIMES when you’re working with git repositories, the remote doesn’t support pushing and pulling over SSH. It only supports HTTPS. Or you don’t have an SSH key properly set up, or you do but it’s not working for some reason. Whatever the cause, the upshot is that whenever you push, you’re forced to type in your username and password. This sucks, understandably. But do you use a password manager, like KeePass, on Windows by any chance? Because if you do, you can authenticate absolutely painlessly. Here’s how.

Set up a KeePass entry for the git server you’re pushing to. Let’s use GitHub as an example. Create a GitHub entry with your username and password, then make sure the entry has these two properties:

Auto-Type: {USERNAME}{ENTER}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}

Auto-Type-Window: Git Bash

If you’re using git on Windows, most likely you’re using Git Bash. Of course, if you’re using Posh Git, then just change the window name to whatever is appropriate.

Now, when you do a ‘git push’ and the git remote asks you to authenticate, simply press your global autotype combo (by default it’s Ctrl-Alt-K) and KeePass will log you in immediately. No SSH necessary.